A three-member Atomic Licensing and Safety Board at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects in March to decide which organizations can intervene in the agency review of the license application for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in New Mexico.
The board has scheduled oral arguments on the intervention and hearing petitions for Wednesday and possibly Thursday in Albuquerque.
A corresponding prehearing session, involving the same quasi-judicial board and many of the same would-be intervenors, would be held sometime after the March ruling – that session for a separate license application for fuel storage in Texas, ASLB Chairman Paul Ryerson indicated in a Jan. 10 order.
“The Board presently expects to issue a ruling on standing and contention admissibility in the New Mexico case in March, and believes oral argument in this [Texas] case will be more productive if the participants have an opportunity to consider the Board’s ruling in the New Mexico proceeding,” Ryerson wrote. “Accordingly, the Board intends to issue an order providing further guidance concerning oral argument in this proceeding around the time it issues its decision in the New Mexico proceeding.”
Holtec International, an energy technology firm based in New Jersey, in 2017 filed the application for a 40-year license to build and operate a facility for underground storage of up to 173,000 metric tons of used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. It hopes to open the site by 2022.
The facility could help the Department of Energy finally meet its congressional directive to remove the spent fuel from nuclear power plants. The deadline for that work to begin was Jan. 31, 1998, but DOE does not yet have a permanent repository for the material.
Organizations that have filed to intervene in opposition to the Holtec project are the Sierra Club; Beyond Nuclear; the Alliance for Environmental Strategies; NAC International; regional energy concerns Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners; and a coalition of advocacy groups headed by Don’t Waste Michigan. Counsel for all those petitioners will make oral arguments next week before the board, along with representatives for Holtec and the NRC staff.
In a Jan. 10 order, the board listed 14 questions it anticipates raising during the oral arguments, including: Whether Holtec believes new legislation would be necessary for the Department of Energy to “lawfully assume ownership of the nuclear waste” at the storage site; the extent of characterization needed for subsurface conditions in the environmental report if they would not be impacted by the site; and the adequacy of the Holtec application regarding geologic risks and characterization of its facility.
Comments will also be accepted from the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, which is partnering with Holtec on the project, and its constituent members: the southeastern New Mexico cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs and Lea and Eddy counties. All five of those entities have requested to participate in the licensing proceeding as interested local government bodies.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will rule whether the petitioners have shown standing and submitted sufficient contentions to be allowed to intervene. Approval would make them parties to the proceeding. The board’s decisions can be appealed to the commission.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists and Orano USA, meanwhile is also seeking a 40-year NRC license by 2021 or 2022. Its facility would be built to hold up to 40,000 metric tons of used fuel and Greater-Than-Class C waste on WCS’ disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas.
The organizations seeking intervention and hearings in that proceeding are: a slightly different iteration of the Don’t Waste Michigan coalition; Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners; the Sierra Club; and Beyond Nuclear.
Broadly, these organizations emphasize the potential dangers of shipping and storing massive amounts of radioactive waste. The project’s supporters, meanwhile, note the potential economic benefits and jobs that would accompany the new facility.
While the cores of each side’s argument is relatively simple, the parties have contested complex legal and technical details in dozens of filings with the NRC.
In each proceeding the applicant has opposed the intervention petitions.
The proceeding has also reached the federal court system, with Beyond Nuclear in late December asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the NRC’s dismissal in October of a petition to dismiss both of the licensing proceedings as violations of existing law.
